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Inadequate land use planning is one of the main driving forces leading to the occurrence of erosion and environmental degradation. The negative impacts of poor planning influence soil physical quality and fertility, agricultural productivity, water quality and availability, biodiversity and other ecosystem services. In some areas, actual land use is not consistent with potential use. When this occurs, the area is termed as being in environmental land use conflict. Many studies have demonstrated the efficiency of the ruggedness number (RN) method for determining land use potential in watersheds. The RN method is simple and can be carried out using geographic information systems (GIS). However, the absence of potential land use or agricultural land suitability assessments is recurrent in territorial management plans or integrated water resources plans (IWRP), especially for macroscale river basins. Therefore, the aim of this preliminary study is to identify possible environmental land use conflicts at the Rio Grande Basin (BHRG), Brazil, using the Ruggedness Number. The results indicate high agricultural use potential and the predominance of appropriate or acceptable soil use at the BHRG. However, class 1, 2 and 3 environmental conflicts were identified in some Rio Grande sub-basins, suggesting greater environmental degradation risks. The findings clearly indicate that more exhaustive studies on environmental quality (soil capability, water, biodiversity) are required at the BHRG, especially in environmental land use conflict areas. We emphasize that this is an important preliminary study which may be carried out in any other macroscale hydrographic basin.

The climate change projections for the Caatinga biome this century are for an increase in temperature and reduction in rainfall, leading to aridization and plant cover dominated by Cactaceae. The objective of this study was to model the potential distribution of Epiphyllum phyllanthus (L.) Haw., a cactus that is native to the Caatinga biome, considering two possible future climate scenarios, to assess this species spatiotemporal response to these climate change, and thus to evaluate the need or not for conservation measures. For this purpose, we obtained biogeographic information on the target species from biodiversity databases, choosing nine environmental variables and applying the MaxEnt algorithm. We considered the time intervals 2041-2060 and 2061-2080, centered on 2050 and 2070, respectively, and the greenhouse gas scenarios RCP4.5 and 8.5. For all the scenarios considered, the models generated for 2050 and 2070 projected drastic contraction (greater than 80%) for the areas of potential occurrence of the species in relation to the present potential. The remaining areas were found to be concentrated in the northern portion of the biome, specifically in the northern part of the state of Ceará, which has particular characteristics.

The Amazon biome contains more than half of the remaining tropical forests of the planet and has a strong impact on aspects of meteorology such as the planetary boundary layer (PBL). In this context, the objective of this study was to conduct observational evaluations of the daily cycle of the height of the PBL during its stable (night) and convective (day) phases from data that were measured and/or estimated using instruments such as a radiosonde, sodar, ceilometer, wind profiler, lidar and microwave radiometer installed in the central Amazon during 2014 (considered a typical year) and 2015 during which an intense El NiñoSouthern Oscillation (ENSO) event predominated during the GoAmazon experiment. The results from the four intense observation periods (IOPs) show that during the day and night periods, independent of dry or rainy seasons, the ceilometer is the instrument that best describes the depth of the PBL when compared with in situ radiosonde measurements. Additionally, during the dry season in 2015, the ENSO substantially influenced the growth phase of the PBL, with a 15 % increase in the rate compared to the same period in 2014.

The climate of South America (SA) has long held an intimate connection with El Niño, historically describing anomalously warm sea-surface temperatures off the coastline of Peru. Indeed, throughout SA, precipitation and temperature exhibit a substantial, yet regionally diverse, relationship with the El NiñoSouthern Oscillation (ENSO). For example, El Niño is typically accompanied by drought 6.in the Amazon and north-eastern SA, but flooding in the tropical west coast and south-eastern SA, with marked socio-economic effects. In this Review, we synthesize the understanding of ENSO teleconnections to SA. Recent efforts have sought improved understanding of oceanatmosphere processes that govern the impact, inter-event and decadal variability, and responses to anthropogenic warming. ENSOs impacts have been found to vary markedly, affected not only by ENSO diversity, but also by modes of variability within and outside of the Pacific. However, while the understanding of ENSOSA relationships has improved, with implications for prediction and projection, uncertainty remains in regards to the robustness of the impacts, inter-basin climate interactions and interplay with greenhouse warming. A coordinated international effort is, therefore, needed to close the observational, theoretical and modelling gaps currently limiting progress, with specific efforts in extending palaeoclimate proxies further back in time, reducing systematic model errors and improving simulations of ENSO diversity and teleconnections.

El Niño years are characterized by a high sea surface temperature anomaly in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, which leads to unusually warm and dry conditions over many fire-prone regions globally. This can lead to an increase in burned area and emissions from fire activity, and socio-economic, and environmental losses. Previous studies using satellite observations to assess the impacts of the recent 2015/16 El Niño found an increase in burned area in some regions compared to La Niña years. Here, we use the dynamic land surface model JULES to assess how conditions differed as a result of the El Niño by comparing simulations driven by observations from the year 2015/16 with mean climatological drivers of temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind, air pressure, and short and long-wave radiation. We use JULES with the interactive fire module INFERNO to assess the effects on precipitation, temperature, burned area, and the associated impacts on the carbon sink globally and for three regions: South America, Africa, and Asia. We find that the model projects a variable response in precipitation, with some areas including northern South America, southern Africa and East Asia getting drier, and most areas globally seeing an increase in temperature. As a result, higher burned area is simulated with El Niño conditions in most regions, although there are areas of both increased and decreased burned area over Africa. South America shows the largest fire response with El Niño, with a 13% increase in burned area and emitted carbon, corresponding with the largest decrease in carbon uptake. Within South America, peak fire occurs from August to October across central-southern Brazil, and temperature is shown to be the main driver of the El Niño-induced increase in burned area during this period. Combined, our results indicate that although 2015/16 was not a peak year for global total burned area or fire emissions, the El Niño led to an overall increase of 4% in burned area and 5% in emissions compared to a No El Niño scenario for 2015/16, and contributed to a 4% reduction in the terrestrial carbon sink.

Sigmodontine rodents are extremely diversified in the Neotropics but their fossil record remains generally poorly known, especially in Brazil. Here, we examine the assemblage of sigmodontines from the limestone cave Nossa Senhora Aparecida (21°5ʹ27.89S 56°34ʹ28.77W), located in Serra da Bodoquena (Mato Grosso do Sul), a karstic region in southwestern Brazil. We describe cranial and dental fragments and recognise the presence of some new species not previously recorded for the region, as Bibimys sp., Graomys cf. G. chacoensis, Thalpomys lasiotis, and Pseudoryzomys simplex. This fossil assemblage is comparable to others fossil sites in Brazil, such as those from Goiás and Rio Grande do Sul, with the predominance of species from open areas, including grasslands, and some of forested environments from Cerrado landscapes.

Urgent sustainability challenges require efective leadership for inter- and trans-disciplinary (ITD) institutions. Based on the diverse experiences of 20 ITD institutional leaders and specifc case studies, this article distills key lessons learned from multiple pathways to building successful programs. The lessons refect both the successes and failures our group has experienced, to suggest how to cultivate appropriate and efective leadership, and generate the resources necessary for leading ITD programs. We present two contrasting pathways toward ITD organizations: one is to establish a new organization and the other is to merge existing organizations. We illustrate how both beneft from a real-world focus, with multiple examples of trajectories of ITD organizations. Our diverse international experiences demonstrate ways to cultivate appropriate leadership qualities and skills, especially the ability to create and foster vision beyond the status quo; collaborative leadership and partnerships; shared culture; communications to multiple audiences; appropriate monitoring and evaluation; and perseverance. We identifed fve kinds of resources for success: (1) intellectual resources; (2) institutional policies; (3) fnancial resources; (4) physical infrastructure; and (5) governing boards. We provide illustrations based on our extensive experience in supporting success and learning from failure, and provide a framework that articulates the major facets of leadership in inter- and trans-disciplinary organizations: learning, supporting, sharing, and training.

We use an unprecedented ensemble of regional climate model (RCM) projections over seven regional CORDEX domains to provide, for the frst time, an RCM-based global view of monsoon changes at various levels of increased greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing. All regional simulations are conducted using RegCM4 at a 25 km horizontal grid spacing using lateral and lower boundary forcing from three General Circulation Models (GCMs), which are part of the ffth phase of the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP5). Each simulation covers the period from 1970 through 2100 under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5). Regional climate simulations exhibit high fdelity in capturing key characteristics of precipitation and atmospheric dynamics across monsoon regions in the historical period. In the future period, regional monsoons exhibit a spatially robust delay in the monsoon onset, an increase in seasonality, and a reduction in the rainy season length at higher levels of radiative forcing. All regions with substantial delays in the monsoon onset exhibit a decrease in pre-monsoon precipitation, indicating a strong connection between pre-monsoon drying and a shift in the monsoon onset. The weakening of latent heat driven atmospheric warming during the pre-monsoon period delays the overturning of atmospheric subsidence in the monsoon regions, which defers their transitioning into deep convective states. Monsoon changes under the RCP2.6 scenario are mostly within the baseline variability.

Since 2012, the semiarid region of Northeast Brazil (NEB) has been experiencing a continuous dry condition imposing significant social impacts and economic losses. Characterizing the recent extreme drought events and uncovering the influence from the surrounding oceans remain to be big challenges. The physical mechanisms of extreme drought events in the NEB are due to varying interacting time scales from the surrounding tropical oceans (Pacific and Atlantic). From time series observations, we propose a three-step strategy to establish the episodic coupling directions on intraseasonal time scales from the ocean to the precipitation patterns in the NEB, focusing on the distinctive roles of the oceans during the recent extreme drought events of 2012-2013 and 2015-2016. Our algorithm involves the following: (i) computing drought period length from daily precipitation anomalies to capture extreme drought events; (ii) characterizing the episodic coupling delays from the surrounding oceans to the precipitation by applying the Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD) of complexity measure, which is based on ordinal partition transition network representation of time series; and (iii) calculating the ratio of high temperature in the ocean during the extreme drought events with proper time lags that are identified by KLD measures. From the viewpoint of climatology, our analysis provides data-based evidence of showing significant influence from the North Atlantic in 2012-2013 to the NEB, but in 2015-2016, the Pacific played a dominant role than that of the Atlantic. The episodic intraseasonal time scale properties are potential for monitoring and forecasting droughts in the NEB in order to propose strategies for drought impacts reduction.

Ferramentas de tecnologia da informação (TI) têm sido apropriadas por governos em diferentes caminhos, por exemplo, para melhorar seus processos internos e efetuar atendimentos ao cidadão via web, todavia novas ferramentas de TI também têm sido utilizadas em coprodução de serviços públicos, como é o caso do Simulador de Direção Veicular (SDV), que é usado dentro do processo de habilitação de condutores (CNH). Essas novas relações precisam ser estudadas para explicar a sociomaterialidade, as relações de poder, interesses e limitações que delas decorrem. Para tal, identifica-se que o SDV é adotado dentro de um contexto governamental, e sua execução depende do cidadão (coprodução de serviço público). Para atingir os objetivos desta pesquisa, utilizam-se a análise sociomaterial e a análise crítica do discurso, e, paralelamente, consideram-se as perspectivas institucionais das organizações e as teorias de governo eletrônico. Os resultados explicam o material e social, sua imbricação, limites, ideologias e os interesses dos atores, bem como estes lidam com as regras existentes para atender aos seus interesses e as relações de poder existentes, dentro de uma perspectiva do realismo crítico.

The Amazon biome contains more than half of the remaining tropical forests of the planet and has a strong impact on aspects of meteorology such as the planetary boundary layer (PBL). In this context, the objective of this study was to conduct observational evaluations of the daily cycle of the height of the PBL during its stable (night) and convective (day) phases from data that were measured and/or estimated using instruments such as a radiosonde, sodar, ceilometer, wind profiler, lidar and microwave radiometer installed in the central Amazon during 2014 (considered a typical year) and 2015 during which an intense El NiñoSouthern Oscillation (ENSO) event predominated during the GoAmazon experiment. The results from the four intense observation periods (IOPs) show that during the day and night periods, independent of dry or rainy seasons, the ceilometer is the instrument that best describes the depth of the PBL when compared with in situ radiosonde measurements. Additionally, during the dry season in 2015, the ENSO substantially influenced the growth phase of the PBL, with a 15 % increase in the rate compared to the same period in 2014.

Brazil is experiencing continuous growth in the solar energy market over the last years, and it is expected that solar power plants will have a significant contribution to the Brazilian energy matrix soon. The solar irradiance variability is an important issue due to its impact on electricity distribution systems. However, solar energy variability has not been comprehensively evaluated in Brazil. The study aimed to assess the capacity of two numerical models of mesoscale in simulating the solar radiation conditions in the Northeastern region of Brazil. For this, a case study was conducted comparing the surface solar irradiation data acquired in 41 automated weather stations operating in the study area and managed by the Brazilian Institute of Meteorology with estimates provided by two weather mesoscale models BRAMS and WRF. The study indicated that the difference between the model’s uncertainties is small (typically less than 5%) when evaluating the entire region of the Brazilian Northeast. However, local comparisons may show more notable discrepancies reflecting uncertainties in the estimates produced by the models.